Editorial. Published Wednesday, February 9, 2000, in the Miami Herald
Stand Against Cuba's Oppression.
These are dark days for those brave Cubans trying to reform their country from within. Yet there's little hope for light as long as the world remains fixated on a custody battle for Elian Gonzalez.
Meanwhile, Cuba's repressive machine squeezes harder. Consider Oswaldo Paya Sardiñas, head of the Christian Liberation Movement and a respected opposition voice in Cuba. He's used to threats and harassment. Now the persecution reaches his family, even his children.
Arrested and detained for a day recently by state security -- as he retold it to El Nuevo staff writer Pablo Alfonso -- Mr. Paya was warned: Your mother is ill, we know it. And you have small children who need you. If you continue, your family will suffer the consequences.
Last week a car followed Mr. Paya's children everywhere. Inside it, four goons with walkie-talkies took note of the kids' every move. Mr. Paya denounced ``these agents, so `valiant and heroic in so many battles,' who specialize in intimidating defenseless children.''
So much for the regime's family values.
What line has Mr. Paya crossed to merit such treatment? He has been a moral, nonviolent advocate of human rights for years.
Recently, though, Mr. Paya and other dissidents grabbed world attention during the Ibero-American Summit in Havana. The more the regime arrested, detained and tried to shut them up, the more brazen and courageous the dissidents got. They called a press conference -- an act potentially punishable
by 20 years in jail -- to release Todos Unidos or All United, a manifesto calling for civic participation in a peaceful transformation of Cuba.
Harking to the pope's visit two years ago, the manifesto affirms: ``As protagonists of our own history, we Cubans must ourselves create the spaces to construct that better society as free men and women.'' Whereas All United had 14 signatures representing independent, thus illegal, groups in
November, now it has 60.
There's the rub: Cuba fears another Concilio Cubano, the coalition of dissident groups that it viciously crushed in 1996. No wonder it outlaws free assembly. No group can be allowed to grow to challenge the state's monopoly on power. Unable to justify itself as anything but a dictatorship, the
regime mercilessly represses those voices of humanity that could gain wide support otherwise.
The only brake on Cuba's police state is the spotlight of media attention and worldwide condemnation. It's time to broaden the agenda beyond Elian. Cuba's dissidents need us.
Copyright 2000 Miami Herald |